Opinion Brief: Wednesday, July 30, 2014

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Good evening, subscribers. For those under the age of 45, the concept of a reliable income in retirement is fast becoming a hangover of Boomer nostalgia, like tie-dye and the Grateful Dead.

It doesn’t have to be that way, writes Linda McQuaig, who’s baffled by the passivity of the pundit corps over the Harper government’s efforts to gut pension standards to suit the interests of corporations. “It’s striking that a bold embrace of risk is only expected of those in the lower echelons of the corporate world. At the top, executives cling to old-world notions — like securing comfortable retirements.”

Our Tel Aviv correspondent Zach Battat speculates on Israel’s Gaza exit strategy. The IDF has already indicated it’s met the immediate military goals of invasion; still the shelling continues and the number of casualties seems to rise hourly. “With Netanyahu now casting about for an exit strategy — and now that the IDF has confirmed that Israel has accomplished its military goals — it’s time for both sides to switch gears from armed aggression to politics.”

Still on Gaza: The Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank reports on how the failure of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s ceasefire pitches is turning into an international source of humiliation for the former presidential hopeful. “Kerry’s nearly 18 months on the job are a lesson in humility, not just for Kerry but for those in Congress who smugly second-guess the officials they oversee. Leading the world is harder than it looks.”

Paul Boothe dives into the numbers separating Ontario from fiscal balance and tells us what the province’s next three lean years will look like. “Some popular government programs and services will be judged non-essential and will be eliminated. There may be labour disruption by public sector workers. Citizens may find the government using new ways to deliver and pay for services like transportation.”

Finally, Bloomberg’s Mark Gilbert explains why the tough new sanctions announced by the EU and the U.S. this week won’t be enough on their own to force Vladimir Putin to pull back from Ukraine. “Russia has more than $472 billion in foreign exchange and gold reserves, though that nest egg has shrunk by about 12 per cent since the beginning of last year.”